Fatal Winter for Waterfowl

The harsh Chicago winter has been a killer. Literally. A surprising number of water birds on Lake Michigan have been found dead along the shore.

With nearly 93 percent of Lake Michigan being frozen this winter, waterfowl were confined to small areas of open water, making food scarce and survival an uphill battle.

Field Museum researchers have been tasked with collecting specimens from the lake and cataloguing them in the lab. According to ornithologist and Field Museum research assistant Josh Engel, museum staff has collected approximately 60 ducks.

“This is presumably a very small percentage of the actual mortality numbers,” Engel said.

Birds migrate here during the winter months from northern areas but the bitter cold made the hunt for fish and mollusks very difficult.

“You could see they were very thin, see their breast muscles , and you could tell they were weak,” Engel said.

While a number of dead ducks have been recovered, more may still be in the water.